Thx for the info on similarweb.com. I was already aware of Alexa, but this one seems to be more useful. I just looked at a national competitor and already got 2 ideas on how to improve our presences and an idea for a blog topic. Thanks!

Great job on your first WBF. I had not heard of urban spoon, so I'm off to check that out. Interesting to hear the history (and reasons for it). It will be interesting to see how social signal play into this.

Wow, David, thanks for the tips. I keep telling myself I need to do more reviews - at least 1/month and ideally 1/wk. I love this idea of using my biz page. I never would have thought about that. Brilliant. Thank you.

I love this. Even though I'm a marketer (now turned business owner), I'm a mathematician at heart and always loved looking at these things, esp game theory (that was my favorite class). I love the Nash equilibrium...and the movie in general and how they visualized everything. It's ironic, because I was problem solving an issue a few months ago,and that scene came into my head and gave me my solution.

Thanks Rachel for sharing this. I agree that tagging is important, and I do get annoyed w/ those things that are mistakenly listed as direct (they really should create a new category called unknown). Anyway, while you bring up excellent points, and I agree w/ you, as a Non-SEO person, I don't know how to tag things. Could you provide some advice on that?

Thx for the tips. I can see a linkedIn page working especially well for businesses that are not "local" or don't depend on what geography they serve. SEO/web design is a perfect example of that (vs. someone needs a local plumber). For my biz (which is more local in nature - similar to the plumber example), google local has worked well for me. I do have recommendations on LinkedIn, but I should probably get some more and actually create a business page there as well. (I've been using LI for so long - for 7 yrs), that I often forget to look at the newer enhancements.

Yes, I think that testing and sharing can be very helpful. Collectively, those who participate will be leaps and bounds above the rest. Oh, and yes, it does seem that Google is often reluctant to share. It's their trade secret, so I don't blame them.

This sounds like a wonderful tool, and I read about this earlier in the week. I wish I still had my pro membership. Maybe you could offer 1 week free if we've already used up our 1 month.

Thanks for all the tips on here. I hope to view this sometime in the future.

I agree w/ StevenHowe's comment. The panning made me a bit dizzy. I love his suggestion about having a screen shot underneath. That would be super helpful for many of these, esp so we can take some better notes. Maybe it could be a picture that you could also enlarge, too.

Glad you are experimenting, though in different techniques to always improve.

Wow this is great, and I definitely bookmarked. (about to share on g+). These are great methods and super examples. I need to figure out how to apply to my biz. The Definitive guide seems to be the one most up my alley, so I will prob. start with that one. I did one post like that on Carpet runners, but I really should do something like that for hardwood. thx for the inspiration.

This is so much fun to learn about the creation and rationale behind your mascot. Smart marketing move (and that is my former background). BTW, I used to work on Hawaiian Punch, and our mascot, Punchy, made a big difference - How 'bout a nice Hawaiian Punch? I guess taglines help, too.

Yes, that sounds really unfair as it is not a true search query. It seems to me that your client should be reimbursed (or get a credit). I agree w/ Rick's point that google would be better served if they help educate places more on how to get a better ROI. If they did, more would stick with it longer and maybe even promote PPC. Right now, they lose customers and customers spread the word that it has a poor ROI.

Wow, this is awesome. So many wonderful tips. I think there are 3 or 4 I'm going to try soon (and I'm bookmarking this page and returning for sure). I think I may try the local reviews my biz page and some of the email marketing ideas immediately and then do a few more in a few months.

Thanks for gathering all of this together. I hope they have a conference like this soon in NYC.

This is a wonderful article, Mike, and as I'm sure you know, several of us in the real estate community have linked to and referenced this article - on G+ and Active Rain. It's wonderful and sets the foundation for how important authorship can be.

Anecdotally, it does seemed like this has already helped my site - the combo of G+ and even more importantly, having my picture next to my key blog posts. I believe it leads to higher click through rates.

BTW, I do flooring, and my posts seem to rank very well for flooring, hardwood flooring, refinishing hardwood floors, etc. But, I don't rank as well for carpet, so I need to work on that. My main site is TheFlooringGirl.com, but I'm thinking that I need to really do a carpet blog to rank better on that (and I do have another site w/ key words that have carpet in the name), so I think I may try that in a month or two.

I realized I'm a bit confused. Yesterday, I added in a few more skills - easy enough. But, I wanted to add the articles that mentioned. Is there a special section for this? Where am I supposed to put them? (or do you mean use them as my status updates? I'm actually doing this already). I would love if there is a permanent place to put my top 3-4 articles.

Thx for this great article. Yes, I have definitely had some challenges finding some of my connections' contact info and I liked having the website there. I that's unfortunate.

Thx for the reminder that we can add skills for people to endorse. I definitely should add 2 or 3. Great idea. And, I agree that endorsing is so quick/easy,and often that results in your connections endorsing more people, so in the end it comes back to you.

I wasn't aware of the article section. I need to check it out, and I may add my top 3 or 4 blog posts on there. Thx for that tip!

Thanks Peter. These tips are really helpful. I've done some of these and I think I may take 1 or 2 of your ideas and begin to implement in a month or two (I have a new hire, so once I can shift some work to her, I can dedicate more time to this). I've bookmarked this so I can come back. Thank you.

Excellent WBF. I love the concept of "Paradox of choice" and so agree that "less is more." Oh, yes, I go crazy when they have a slew of social media sharing buttons. It really seems that user experience and SEO optimization are working more together hand in hand. I think site speed is another example of that.

Thanks so much. This is very handy. And, LOL...I finally discovered on here where all these Mozinars are. I clicked on your link and I see there's a whole section of them. Wow. Thanks. Can't believe I didn't realize this before.

Oh, and thx for some great examples of people to follow. I know some of them, but not all.

Thanks for the great insights here. I appreciate that they are trying to make sure the reviews are legit, but I have to say it's frustrating when I see the # of my reviews decrease...when I know those reviews are real. I think one issue is lack of activity on the reviewer's account, and many times that happens just because people change their email addresses.

LOL on the speed of that first video. I had seen that video a while back, and then I think I rewatched it to try to get the rest of the info.

These are some great tips. I really like the survey idea as it's a way to get some interaction and really understand what the consumer likes. I think I will see if I can try this as it may help me better understand my target audience.

These are great tips. I'm going to see if we can try some of these soon. I'll add in one other thing (although it may be a nuance one of yours above. My company (a nationwide franchise) has been doing a survey afterwards called Net Promoter score - the % of people that would recommend you to a friend less the % of detractors. They ask just 2 q's - how likely are you to recommend us to a friend (score of 1-10) and then why did you choose that rating.

There was great learning there, but they didn't stop w/ just past customers...they then started to survey non customers (the ones that said no) as well as the ones that we never even met with. Some great learning for us.

Thx so much Rand. This is great, and I love the tips and idea of looking at the competition to see where they are listed. I had looked at some of this for my original website, but now I have a tricky issue - a 2nd website. My 2nd website has done much better than my original one (and it uses my nickname), and it has much higher conversion/loyalty. So, naturally, I'd prefer to strengthen the 2nd one. But, I don't want to mess up the good rankings I already on the first one, and I don't want to get penalized by google for anything . So, not quite sure the best way to do it. Let me know if you have any advice.

Excellent points. LOL, I can see me messing up my results just by checking out my site. Good to know you can exclude some competitors if you know where they are located. (Also, BTW, I often find that very close "neighbors" of my competitors, esp those in walking distance) tend to shop there...and will find a close out sale eventually, so even if I didn't have exact IP addy of competitor, getting it close would prob. serve the same purpose.

Thanks so much for your response. That is great to know. Because that would enable me to do this much more cost efficiently. After I have my new hire on board (so we can take on more customers), I want to experiment with this.

Great WBF. I can definitely see how this could work very well for online stores. I'm a local business and can only service people nearby. I get a lot of traffic to my blog, but it help them if they live far away. (We do get lots of calls from local customers so the blog is doing its job for sure). But, if you were to do some remarketing, can you focus it by geography?

This is something I may look into in the future (once I get more staff). Thankfully, we are extremely busy right now.

Thx so much for putting this together. This is definitely something I need to look into as mobile represents a nice and growing chunk of my website traffic (and these users tend to be higher end, too). Thx for the link to the video and the slide show. It's so great to have that outline too as there is so much info, so this makes it much easier to pinpoint specific areas to return to. I've bookmarked both so I can try to review over the weekend.

Smart approach. You are so right about looking at INCREMENTAL value, esp when you have large fixed costs. I really like the cohort approach, and I may even look at some of that for my business which is somewhat seasonal. There are certain times of the year (for my biz) where many decisions are made quickly, but other times where people are just "starting their research" and intend to do the projects for spring/summer. I'm really curious to go back and analyze my data by month based on this hypothesis.

Thx Jen. These are some great tips. Mine is just a small blog site and I do respond to comments and emails (as well as phone calls). I never thought about taking the blog comments one step further, and I do hope people are coming back to see the comments...but I'm guessing most don't. so, now I may supplement this with an email to them so make sure they saw my response. thx for the tip.

Thx so much for all the tips (and including the video). I like the idea of linking to the about me page. Also, this just reinforces the need for diversity of links.

And, you made me realize that there are several times where I've linked to specific blog posts and used the title of those posts...but I prob. need to mix that up a bit more as others prob. wouldn't use my exact titles. At times, I've mixed it up, but probably not enough. (But thankfully, there are not a ton of these links, only a few).

Great post, and it does seem (anecdotally and logically) that google authorship can or will have an impact. Anecdotally, it seems that +'ng my post helps it get indexed faster and higher. While it is hard to prove or isolate the elements, my hunch is that currently, the biggest impact is having your profile pict show up in the results...seems like that leads to higher click through raters.

That makes sense. Oh and I should probably change my name on here...this is from a couple of years ago. My new site is TheFlooringGirl.com...and that's literally what people call me. Lots of people link to me that way.

When I leave some comments on blog posts, I do try to mix the name up a bit. Sometimes it's The flooring Girl, other times it's Debbie Gartner the Flooring Girl, other times it's The Flooring Girl of Westchester. I try not to be spammy by leaving just key words as I heard that really annoys people so I stopped that a year or two ago. I don't do a ton of blog commenting. I figured a few each month might suffice.

Good morning, Cyrus. Great white board Friday. I really love your idea of creating a linkable asset. I need to think about how I can create that for my site and be useful...either for people in my industry or perhaps even for the real estate industry. Love it, love it, love it. Now, I just have to figure out what it is. (thanks for the homework assignment LOL).

It does seem, that overall link diversity (type of links...(provided they are good) and anchor text) is the way to go. I'm also guessing that it's okay to have a bunch of links that all of have the same anchor text IF they are the name of your site. Is that right? It seems to me that would be natural as that's how many sites and directories link to me when I do not control the anchor text.

Glad my comment was able to prompt something to help you. I do think authorship will have an impact, but we shall see. From what I've read, it seems that you would be more of a topic expert - for you SEO, for me flooring, so it might help you rank a bit better on your topic authority.

I'm not surprised about ranking well for Westchester carpet pad. Almost no one has written about it, so not that hard to rank for it. This article was inspired by a customer who found me typing in "Westchester moisture barrier carpet pad." I realized that she found a page I wrote on my old site and I thought it was okay, but not great and not complete, so I rewrote and expanded it on my new site and I was really only competing with myself.

Yes, I still have some red errors on here that I need to fix. Wow, on 9500 do follow links. I wasn't even aware. Maybe I need to share more on social media to balance things out. I don't know what "sitewide" links are. Again, I think the majority may have come from my blog on Active Rain. I need to look into this as now I may have by accident created a monster. this is ironic as I have not been doing a ton of link building, but I do blog daily on that site.

1. I agree w/ your point about the home page/2 picts...and the home page in general needs some work for optimization - visually, contentwise and SEO wise...and that is a project for March. This is due to the limitations on my theme and I need time to figure out the new one. I completely agree. (also, most the entrances (90%) come in through the blog posts where there is only 1 picture of me and I like that better.

2. URL's too long...actually most are wi/ the google guidelines/SEOMoz stuff, but point well taken as some should be shorter and that is a good guideline and there are still some I need to fix.

3. Link building. I'm surprised that I have 10,000 inbound links. I have actually not done that much link building for the site. However, I do have a blog on Active Rain, and I have a hunch that most are from there and then the agents reblogging my content. What I don't have is a much diversity of linking/more domains.

Super article, Matt. Yes, there do seem to be a lot of factors impacting the page well beyond page authority/domain authority. I also wonder how the landscape may shift if/when they truly integrate google authorship.

I also wonder about the importance of topic authority (which I think may be what you were mentioning w/ domain level key word usage. My blog seems to do very well. It's about flooring (all types), but I tend to rank much better for articles about hardwood flooring (maybe due to my domain name that has flooring in it), but less so for carpet. (and, not sure how to rank better on carpet).

Thx Will. That makes sense. Really, it probably completely offsets the coupon. The ironic thing is that if it cost less initially and people were seeing the biz impact, they'd be more likely to stay with it (and maybe even pay a bit more as time goes on) because they see the value and can justify the ROI.

I know a contractor site where that's the case. The leads are great (for the most part) and it's a great investment. As their membership goes up, the annual rates go up proportionately, and I'm willing to pay as I can justify that investment and have proven results.

I love that TED talk and I've watched it a few times. You're right, if you start with the why and always focus on the consumer everything else will fall into place. For my blog's content, I focus on the questions my customers ask, and then I answer them, 1 post at a time.

I probably can/should do more link building and my PR is only 1, but I do get a lot of hits on my site and more importantly a lot of leads/appointments and they are high quality. I'm now looking to hire another person since we've gotten so busy (and it's the slow season now).

Thanks for your insights. It's made me realize that I need to focus more on quality than quantity and maybe look for guest posting ideas/links within my industry as that will be more targeted for my customer.

Thank you so much for this article. We are about to "redesign" my website by choosing a new theme and this will solve several issues that I'm currently having. Now, I'm going to build this idea into the mix as I look at this. Thanks.

BTW, as I'm also a biz owner, I've found the following to be helpful for FAQ's: 1) customers my q's actually ask me while on appts, 2) comments and q's on blogs, 3) going to answers.com and yahoo answers to see what customers ask and 4) looking at FAQ's on other competitive sites.

I love this idea as it can really generate a lot of long tail ideas. Thx.

I guess White Board Friday is a great example of consistency. And it does seem that you have followed many/all of these tips as you've created a community and proprietary software. The willingness to share what others can't provides interest and trust. Thx for the great insights.

Thanks so much. This is a key opportunity for my website and something I'm working on, so the timing is perfect. You are so right about the user experience - the less time loading, the more they'll read/more pages they'll go to. And, of course the load times for my site are slower for mobile, so I really need to address this over next month or two.

wow, what a wondeful post. You're right, a lot of info here. I read it once all the way through and bookmarked so I can try to execute later. I may do one section each weekend or something. Thank you so much.

Wow, Chris, thanks for sharing this heart felt story. I'm so sorry this happened to you. But, it sounds like you are rising back up, even if starting by crawling. You have to crawl before you walk, right?

I think your takeaways and lessons here are fabulous. This is really scary that something like this can just happen over night. One other takeaway I would have is to try to diversify. While I get a lot of business from the web/search, I also do get business elsewhere and that helps. Last year, I had one key lead source that went down temporarily (for maybe 2-3 months) due to a bad review. I had to supplement w/ work elsewhere (including beefing up my site). And, then, that issue was fixed and we got more great reviews and now things are normal again.

What a great article with wonderful examples. I love how you explain the how the visuals and texts work together. That is wonderful advice to look at your competition and the landscape. I never thought about the idea of having some profiles similar to your target.

I also wonder if different types of visuals attract men vs. women. While your explanations are wonderful, there are many times where I was not attracted by the visual, and I believe that's because I'm a different target than you are.

Thank Scott. There are some great marketing ideas here. I never thought about telling my story on my blog, so that's something I might try to do soon. Also, I think I may tell some stories about solving some of my customer's issues on my blog. I did this on another blog site, and it seemed to do well, so I should probably give it a whirl on my main site. Thanks for the insight. Oh, and great examples and well illustrated with the videos.

This is a wealth of information, so I'm bookmarking. Great tips on how to screen as well as types to avoid (oh and I hate those ones w/ all the ads). I do need to do some more guest blogging in 2013. Thank you for this great resource list, too.

Thanks so much. This is super helpful and illustrated very
well. I was looking into this on my site as had 34 pages w/ over 100
links from the SEOMoz crawl. At first, I was very confused because I only
had a few links in the post, but then I realized all my menus and sidebars have
lots of links. Now, I have to try to figure out how to eliminate some.

That's great news. You guys are making some nice enhancements. I just noticed that it has the last update date on the upper right and you can then click on the calendar to see the date so you can check back in. Thx.

Thx so much. I need to look into some of these, esp the local SEO contact page and majestic SEO Dashboard. Thx also for the social sharing options. I need to test some of these out for site speed to see which is best.

thx so much. I'm going to try that other free crawler for the first 500 URL's. (bookmarking this). And, you finally helped open my eyes on that duplicate content that SEOMoz crawler identified. I solved most of the issues, but I still have 25 pages showing as duplicate so now I might try some 301 redirects. Thx.

Yes, over the last 6 months, I've really noticed more and more of my posts coming up on Google + in the rankings. I started to get back to google plus in June and then very active by end of Aug and it seems to be leading to better rankings on my site/more traffic, so it seems to be a win win.

Super post, Rand. I really need to look into that Google blog reader. For me, I think maybe finding some local blogs would be best as those people tend to be influencers in my community (and I can really only help local customers). There are not that many in my industry who blog, but ironically, two of us connected earlier this week due to a comment I left on one of your posts. It really made me think about things differently.

Thanks so much. I've been working on this issue for my site over the last month or so. I have used smush.it and that does seem to help and in process of compressing some image. I also have recently done a bunch of 301 redirects (some because my URL's were too long). You just made me realize that for some of them, I can change the internal links too so that those are not in fact redirecting.

This is really helpful. I'm glad that most of these are not an issue for me. One of the things I've been working on this last year is altering the anchor text. I did have a concern on my site as I do have a similar page on my site that I have for many different towns. The towns and zips, as well as google maps differ, but the main content is similar. So one of the things I did in November was to help make them different by adding all the street names where we did work in each town. The positioning is that we are your friendly neighborhood flooring store so that works too. I'm going to see if I can come up w/ any other additional ways to differentiate those pages.

Thanks so much for the wonderful tips. In particular, I want to work more on linking to authority sites. This always confused me as it seems like you are giving away link juice, so I'm not sure I really understand how it helps, but I've now read this same concept from 3 different people.

Great recap. I used to have many more reviews (I think I had 10) and every month or two that # seemed to decline,and now I only have 4. The reviews I had were all legit so not sure why they filtered them out. I guess I need to work on getting some more.

Interesting point above that they are no longer showing reviews from other sites.

Super post and I just shared on G+. I love your balanced approach to analyzing 2012. I think it's so interesting how SEO and SM are kind of merging and creating synergy. Personally, I'm hoping G+ becomes bigger and more importantly that authorrank plays a part of search. And, if it does, then most likely G+ will accelerate even further.

It's amazing to see how Google is evolving. It's a really interesting concept to think about "intention" for the search. For me, I'm just going to try to stick to good and unique content for my biz. I believe/hope in the end, that will work out.

I guess the Greeks were right - everything in moderation and nothing in excess. Diversify sums it up well. I've been trying to do that more w/ my anchor text and links from more sites. Thx for opening my eyes up further on how to do this. Being too dependent on any 1 lead source can be a recipe for disaster.

Wow, this is such a comprehensive guide. Thank you. I'm bookmarking and off to check my webmaster tools again. I've used the broken link section many times and found that helpful. I've been making a bunch of tweaks to many pages on my site over the last 3 weeks or so, so it will be interesting to see the impact. I also like looking at the CTR. Shows me which are doing well as well as some that have room for improvement.

Wow, Dana. You really shifted the way I think about blog commenting. That is a huge win. I need to figure out if I can do find some complementary blogs for my industry...and ones where they are truly complementary and don't see me as competition (or vice versa). I have not embedded anchor text links in the comment as usually that seems spammy. But, in your context, as it really built the conversation, it really worked. Thank you for sharing and for your great insights.

Oh, and I hear you on not using key words in your name. That can be a bit tacky. Once someone pointed that out to me, I changed it. But, sometimes, I use the combo of my name/nickname for my industry (i.e. Debbie Gartner - The Flooring Girl). My key words are actually Westchester hardwood flooring, but at least with this, at least it gets "flooring" in there and it's less spammy.

I didn't realize there were so many tools out there. I've been using hootsuite for the last few years and I love that. I just wish I had the ability to post to my G+ personal page. I'm now doing that via Do Share on Chrome. But, it would be much easier if I could do everything in one place. I'm going to check out some of your suggestions. Thank you.

Yes, it's fascinating that Google has maintained their mission...and it's clear. That's a sign of a great company. (I used to work at Procter & Gamble, and that was one of the things I loved about the company.

For google, they maintain the same purpose. They may shift the tactics, but they have remained singular in their focus.

This is great info. I've been working to improve my site speed and recently used pingdom. That helped me indentify a major issue in my header which we just fixed. Also, the plugin for social sharing was slowing things down a lot, too. And, I used smushit. All of these have helped, but I still have more work to do.

Do you have a recommendation on a good social sharing plugin (for wordpress) that doesn't slow things down too much? Right now, I converted to sexy bookmarks, which has helped, but not sure if there is a better one that doesn't slow things down as much.